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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Very often books provide us with an escape. But sometimes they show us a place not so much an escape but a waking nightmare, a place we don't want to go. Julia Fierro's The Gypsy Moth Summer, a novel about a wealthy community in turmoil, facing its secrets and prejudices, is narrated almost exclusively by outsiders or those on the fringes. And while the characters might, although not certainly, want to be a part of this group, the reader definitely does not.

In 1992, Avalon Island, off the coast of Long Island, is being overrun by rapacious gypsy moths. As they decimate the island's foliage and it's anyone's guess which trees and shrubs will survive the onslaught, they coat everything beneath them in black excrement. The inhabitants of the island are themselves coated in the nastiness of racism, classism, and willful ignorance and disregard of environmental safeties in the name of profit among other things. This ugliness comes to a head when Leslie Day Marshall, the daughter of one of the island's ruling families inherits The Castle, her family's estate, and moves back to Avalon with her black husband and two mixed race children. Leslie's husband Jules is a Harvard trained landscape designer but his skin marks him immediately as an outsider. He is wary of this place, cognizant of the daily casual racism he encounters, uncomfortable except when he's working in the garden. Their son Brooks is a teenager and daughter Eva is just a toddler when they move into this very white, very rich enclave. Maddie Pencott LaRosa is Brooks' age and she lives next door to him in the guest house on her grandparents' estate. Like Brooks, she is an outsider in the tony East side. Her mother grew up in East Avalon, a daughter of wealth and privilege, but Maddie's father is Italian from West Avalon, the side of the island where the working class lives, so Maddie is constantly straddling both sides of a sharp class divide and desperately wanting to fit in with the preppy teenagers at her high school. This summer she's finally made it into the coveted in-group. Her younger brother Dom is also an outsider, his crime hers but also complicated by the fact that the bullies have homed in on the fact that he's gay, something that Dom is only just figuring out himself and is certainly not acceptable in the military inspired society of East Avalon. Veronica, Maddie and Dom's indomitable grandmother, has come back to the island with their grandfather, the Colonel, hiding some major secrets but determined to fight for Grudder Aviation, the company that looms so large over the island. All of these characters come together this summer in what starts out seeming innocent enough but ends explosively.

Jules, Maddie, Dom, and Veronica are the focus of the bulk of the narration with occasional chapters about Leslie's multiple miscarriages and one notable chapter centered on the Colonel. Each of these outsiders builds up a damning story of a terrible place. It's a place where the main industry, Grudder Aviation, is potentially (almost certainly) poisoning the very water the inhabitants drink. Cancer and other biological disasters run rampant through the population who lives there. It's a place where bored, rich teenagers are left to their own devices, drinking, smoking, doing drugs, and exploring sex, while their parents stumble drunkenly from one big, gracious home to another, gossiping about one another, acting two-faced, and turning aaside from their own unconscious racism. It's a place where both casual and intentional cruelty is ignored and accepted. The only disruption to this long standing life is the appearance around the island of graffiti targeting the environmental crimes perpetrated by Grudder. "Grudder is cancer. Grudder kills." These startling pronouncements only cause a ripple in the lush, dreamlike life of the island. But just as the gypsy moths tearing through the island's greenery leaves the land naked to view, so too the events of the summer leave the society and the company open to scrutiny.

The writing is hypnotic and intense with descriptions of the moths, their excrement, and their devastation. Fierro has created a place that is so real feeling you can hear the moths crunching through the trees and see them writhing on every trunk. All of the characters here are hollowed out by desperation of one kind or another. They are well fleshed out and although they seem easy to read, each of them has more going on underneath the surface than expected. But this is a society based on appearance so what's underneath doesn't matter. Until it does. But Fierro doesn't let the reader forget that even the superficial gloss of wealth isn't pretty; in fact, it's downright ugly. The novel was uncomfortable to read and Avalon Island itself sounds like a terrible place filled with horrible people but the novel shines a light on all of the awfulness, the hidden crimes and their unacknowledged impact through the shocking final reckoning in the end. There is an air of impending disaster throughout the novel, heightened by the inexorable progress of the gypsy moths from hatching through to spawning. The narration shifts are easy to follow but sometimes the jumps from one character to another weaken the narrative thread, making it a little too easy to set the novel down. And there isn't an "ism" or social ill that isn't included in the story, lessening the impact that a tighter focus might have had. The foreshadowing is pretty obvious but there are still a few surprises in the end. This is not a light summer read but those who want more heft in their beach bags might enjoy it for sure.

Amazon says this about the book: A lively, sexy, and thought-provoking East-meets-West story about community, friendship, and women’s lives at all ages—a spicy and alluring mix of Together Tea and Calendar Girls.

Every woman has a secret life . . .

Nikki lives in cosmopolitan West London, where she tends bar at the local pub. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she’s spent most of her twenty-odd years distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community of her childhood, preferring a more independent (that is, Western) life. When her father’s death leaves the family financially strapped, Nikki, a law school dropout, impulsively takes a job teaching a "creative writing" course at the community center in the beating heart of London’s close-knit Punjabi community.

Because of a miscommunication, the proper Sikh widows who show up are expecting to learn basic English literacy, not the art of short-story writing. When one of the widows finds a book of sexy stories in English and shares it with the class, Nikki realizes that beneath their white dupattas, her students have a wealth of fantasies and memories. Eager to liberate these modest women, she teaches them how to express their untold stories, unleashing creativity of the most unexpected—and exciting—kind.

As more women are drawn to the class, Nikki warns her students to keep their work secret from the Brotherhood, a group of highly conservative young men who have appointed themselves the community’s "moral police." But when the widows’ gossip offers shocking insights into the death of a young wife—a modern woman like Nikki—and some of the class erotica is shared among friends, it sparks a scandal that threatens them all.

Monday, May 29, 2017

Alaska intrigues me. It is one of the places on my bucket list. I'm intrigued by the rugged, naturalness of the state, it's remoteness and the idea of it as this country's last frontier. How much more rugged and unspoiled would it have been at the dawn of the twentieth century when prospectors were racing there for the promise of gold? Ashley Sweeney's novel, Eliza Waite, captures that air of rough and tumble and the possibility of reinvention in the frontier town of Skagway, Alaska.

Eliza Waite is a widow who lives alone on a remote island in the San Juan Islands of Washington. From a well-off Midwestern family, she was married off to a stranger who took her west to Cypress Island where he was a minister. When an epidemic decimated the population of the island, carrying off both Eliza's beloved young son and her husband, she stays in their home to be close to her boy's final resting place even though she is all alone and life is hard and dangerous. When Eliza injures herself, she manages to make it to the mainland where she is nursed back to health. She thinks she might just be coming alive again out of the well of deep grief she's been existing in but when things go awry, she flees to Skagway, Alaska with the intention of opening a bakery in the booming gateway to the Klondike. In Skagway, Eliza has the chance to reinvent herself, to take charge of her own destiny. She opens herself up to the diverse people around her and works on building a life among these unusual but wonderful new friends.

Eliza is a strong and appealing character. The courage it takes to hop a ship with the flood of prospectors having no guarantee that the fifty dollars in her pocket will buy her a new life is astounding. She has endured hardship, tragedy, and deception and yet she never loses her determination to survive. Sweeney draws the evolution of Eliza's character very well and she's captured the gritty verisimilitude of a a gold rush town beautifully. Eliza's past, her unhappy childhood and less than ideal marriage, weaves through the narrative, helping the reader to understand better who she is. The second part of the book, once she reaches Alaska is far more compelling than the story of her sad and lonely existence on Cypress Island, perhaps because that is where her character feels true and empowered. She's actually forging a life instead of treading water. As she is a wonderful baker, there are recipes sprinkled throughout the book, directly in the text and they feel historically accurate. Although the beginning is too drawn out, the writing is good and the setting is intriguing so fans of historical fiction will certainly enjoy this unusual tale of a smart, capable, and undaunted woman.

The House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Nine Island by Jane Alison
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
The Young Widower's Handbook by Tom McAllister
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do But You Could've Done Better by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
Make Trouble by John Waters
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Water From My Heart by Charles Martin
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro

Somehow I still think of myself as a twenty something but in actual fact, my children are almost there and my own twenties are but a distant memory. Distant memory or not, I'm still really looking forward to this novel about a group of twenty somethings in London trying to figure out where they want to be in life and how to get there.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, May 28, 2017

It's that time of year again. The time of year when I publicly declare what I am going to read this summer. For the purposes of my list, summer runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Even so, as in past years, it will be about a thousand miles longer than I can possibly accomplish. And if the past is any indication, I will veer off list at least a few times because I just can not confine myself to the list, no matter how much I adore lists (and I do adore lists). I am going up north sooner than I have been able to in the past decade or so so perhaps I'll be closer to finishing the list than usual. Or maybe not. In any case, here's what I'd like to accomplish this summer:

The books that I've started and not yet finished (with any luck one of these will be finished today so I can strike it off my summer reads list):

No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley

The book I didn't read on time because I missed the book club meeting:

Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau

The books for my summer book club:

This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner

Books for review:

The Beach at Painter’s Cove by Shelley Noble
Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
My Glory Was I Had Such Friends by Amy Silverstein
Kiss Carlo by Adriana Trigiani
The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson
The Dress in the Window by Sofia Grant
Whispering in French by Sophia Nash
The Sworn Virgin by Kristopher Dukes
The Daughters of Ireland by Santa Montefiore
The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes by David Handler
Life and Separate by Marilyn Simon Rothstein

Just because:

A Fugitive in Walden Woods by Norman Lock
The Strays by Emily Bitto
The Temporary Bride by Jennifer Klinec
The Windfall by Diksha Basu
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Little Exile by Jeanette S. Arakawa
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Good Karma by Christina Kelly
The Tower of Antilles by Achy Obejas
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorrell
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
Meantime by Katharine Noel
June by Miranda Beverly-Whittmore
We Were Witches by Ariel Gore
Queen of Spades by Michael Shou-Yung Shum
No One Is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig
Chasing the King of Heart by Hanna Krall
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Our Short History by Lauren Grodstein
The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Best of Us by Joyce Maynard
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Boat Runner by Devin Murphy
So Much Blue by Percival Everett
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
Hola and Goodbye by Donna Miscolta
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
The Farm in the Green Mountains by Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer
Beck by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon
The Crows of Beara by Julie Christine Johnson
You & a Bike & a Road by Eleanor Davis
The Guy We Didn’t Invite to the Orgy by David Ebenbach
Ars Botanica by Tim Taranto
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
The Skin Above My Knee by Marcia Butler
The Portrait by Antoine Laurent
Songs from the Violet Café by Violet Kidman
Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar
Bloodlines by Marcello Fois
A Bloom of Bones by Allen Morris Jones
Hidden Figures by Margot Shetterly
Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon

If you scrolled through the entire obnoxiously long list, here's where I've been traveling in books this past week: I was in China with an ethnic minority woman who gave up her baby and in the US with that baby after her adoption; I was in Afghanistan with a woman awaiting trial for the murder of her husband; I time traveled into the past to meet Jane Austen in her England; I was in California as a wife and mother coped with her husband's ALS diagnosis, his subsequent personality change, and eventual death all while trying to raise their young sons and maintain her career; I came from an alternate reality Toronto with the man who went back in time and changed the future (our present) by accident. I did also do some actual travel to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park and that was wonderful. Where have your reading and actual travels taken you this past week?

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Books take us to places other than those we know. They pull us from our comfort zones and ask us to put ourselves in characters and situations completely outside our realm of experience. For most Americans, Afghanistan is not somewhere we've ever been. It's a place we see on the news or lump in together with the rest of the Middle East. But we don't have much knowledge of life there at all, especially in its villages. Nadia Hashimi's newest novel, The House Without Windows, takes the reader to this Afghanistan to see not only the plight of women there but to see the ways in which its justice system still disproportionately punishes women and how there are people working to right the imbalances so prevalent today.

Zeba has been charged with the murder of her husband, Kamal. She endured his beating and drinking for years, bearing him four living children, cooking and cleaning, and always being a dutiful wife. When she is discovered, with blood on her hands, in the courtyard of their home with her husband's body, there is little doubt that she was the one to embed the hatchet in the back of his skull. But she won't talk about what happened, even after she is arrested and sent to Chil Mahtab, the women's prison. Her biggest concern is not with defending herself nor with whether she will be found guilty but how her four children are doing at their aunt's house, whether Kamal's family is treating them as the children of a murderer, and whether the children will believe all of the terrible things that are surely being said about her. She never for a minute doubts that she will be found guilty and hang for the crime. And there's no reason for her to believe otherwise given all of the other women locked up with her, many for the crime of zina. This crime encompasses an unmarried woman having sex, an unmarried woman dallying/flirting with a coworker, rape, and more. It is essentially a charge of immorality. Such is the lot of women.

Zeba might not talk about what happened the day that Kamal was murdered, but the narrative moves between her present day situation and her past, culminating in the eventual revelation of just what did happen that terrible day. Most of the story is focused on Zeba and her current situation but there are a couple of other interesting threads also woven throughout the story, that of her mother Gulnaz, a jadugar (sorceress), and the father who disappeared when Zeba was just a child as well as that of Yusuf, a young Afghani-born lawyer returned from America and assigned to Zeba's case. The perspective of the story shifts from Zeba to Gulnaz to Yusuf and back again in order to move the plot along. Hashimi does a good job using the imprisoned women in the story to show the overall insignificance of women in the culture and the inequalities they suffer in all aspects of life, but certainly in the justice system. Zeba's situation is horrifying on many levels and the reader can be no more assured of Zeba's receiving true justice than the character herself is. It took skill to weave the story as Hashimi does, balancing the reader's desire with staying true to the reality of the culture. Those interested in women's rights, especially in the Middle East, will find this to be a dynamic and compelling story.

Amazon says this about the book: The New York Times bestselling author of Falling presents a warm, wise, and wonderfully vivid novel about a mother who asks her three estranged daughters to come home to help her end her life.

Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home, she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters.

As soon as possible, tomboy Nell fled her mother’s overbearing presence to work on a farm and find her own way in the world as a single mother. The target of her mother’s criticism, Meredith never felt good enough, thin enough, pretty enough. Her life took her to London—and into the arms of a man whom she may not even love. And Lizzy, the youngest, more like Ronni than any of them, seemed to have it easy, using her drive and ambition to build a culinary career to rival her mother’s fame, while her marriage crumbled around her.

But now the Sunshine sisters are together again, called home by Ronni, who has learned that she has a serious disease and needs her daughters to fulfill her final wishes. And though Nell, Meredith, and Lizzy have never been close, their mother’s illness draws them together to confront the old jealousies and secret fears that have threatened to tear these sisters apart. As they face the loss of their mother, they will discover if blood might be thicker than water after all...

Monday, May 22, 2017

When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
On the Sickle's Edge by Neville D. Frankel
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Nine Island by Jane Alison
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
The Young Widower's Handbook by Tom McAllister
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do But You Could've Done Better by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
Make Trouble by John Waters
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Water From My Heart by Charles Martin
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Thursday, May 18, 2017

I took a Russian-Soviet Life class in high school. We read both Russian and Soviet dissident writers as well as learning the history of this massive country and its peoples. I took two years of Russian which left me able to count to ten and insult people. I took Russian history classes in college. Go ahead and ask me about Peter the Great! Obviously I have been intrigued by Russia for a long time. I was less interested in the country in its incarnation as the USSR though, despite the second half of that history/literature class I had in high school. There was just something about the institutionalized grimness that appealed to me far less than the glamour of the tsars and tsarinas (yes, I plain old ignored the plight of the serfs). But over the many years since I was in school, I have picked up more and read more about this fascinating part of the world, once so closed off and now so prominent in our own currentpolitical situation. The grimness of life in the USSR is still not my favorite part of history but I am more open to it than I ever used to be so I was intrigued by the idea behind Neville Frankel's novel On the Sickle's Edge.

Lena's family were Latvian Jews. Her father fled to South Africa after deserting from the tsar's army. His wife and children made the journey later and it was in South Africa that Lena and her twin brother were born. Their mother died in childbirth and this tragedy ultimately drove their father to take his three youngest children back to their village in Illuxt. He left the two oldest boys, young teens, in South Africa as he didn't have the funds to pay for so many passages back to Russia. The separation was intended to be temporary but the First World War and then the Russian Revolution exploded, making the family's split permanent. The narrative then follows Lena and her family as they give up Judaism in the hopes of making their way in the new communist Moscow. Eventually the story includes Darya, Lena's granddaughter who marries a man determined to rise in the ranks of the KGB but who is herself questioning what she sees in the party, and Steven, the grandson of one of Lena's South American brothers, now living and working in Boston as an artist and a teacher.

The novel opens with Steven crouched in a clump of trees holding a gun and watching a dacha. From that tense initial image, the narrative of these three generations moves back in time to 1898 to tell the story of this family who escaped, returned, and was trapped in the oppressive USSR to make a living as best they could. It ranges from the tsars to perestroika and glasnost. The bulk of the story is Lena's and she is by far the most interesting of the characters. Frankel does a pretty good job weaving the political happenings of this gigantic country into the lives of his characters, showing the actual effects of policies on the masses. When the novel follows Lena, it is clearly a historical novel but when Darya and Steven become more the focus, it shifts gears into an almost pure political thriller rife with danger, sex, murder, and betrayal. The split is an uneasy one and leaves the reader wondering what the book is supposed to be as it is neither one nor the other. The small details, like the difference in food available to those who are merely workers and those who are party officials, expose the flawed society quite clearly. The atmosphere of the novel feels right and the generational story is interesting over all if too long.

Although the story was generally good enough, it was a bit ponderous and I never quite felt fully immersed in it so when I came across details that were wrong, well, I couldn't stop myself from noting them. Darya's eye color when Lena meets her goes from being the same startling green as her grandfather's to being brown when Steven later describes them. Late in the novel Lena is surprised by Steven's resemblance to her father and his great-grandfather so she shows him a picture of the family. In it are her father, his wife, her older brothers and sister, and Lena and her twin. The problem is that Lena's mother died giving birth to Lena and her brother and her stepmother was never in a photo with the oldest boys who were left behind in South Africa before she and their father married. Darya and Steven are described in the novel as being distant cousins but based on the family tree at the beginning of the novel, they are actually only second cousins, not terribly distant at all as their grandparents were siblings. Small mistakes for sure, but ones that pulled this reader out of the tale. Couple these mistakes with the strange thriller-y turn the novel took in the last third to quarter of the book and it didn't work for me quite as well as I had hoped. Others have really loved it though so perhaps you should try it for yourself if the premise interests you as it did me.

Amazon says this about the book: A luminous coming-of-age novel about a young female scientist who must recalibrate her life when her academic career goes off track; perfect for readers of Lab Girl and Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You.

Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. She's tormented by her failed research--and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence from her throughout her life. But there's another, nonscientific question looming: the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can't make a life before finding success on her own. Eventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and herself, behind. And for the first time, she's confronted with a question she won't find the answer to in a textbook: What do I really want? Over the next two years, this winningly flawed, disarmingly insightful heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry--one in which the reactions can't be quantified, measured, and analyzed; one that can be studied only in the mysterious language of the heart. Taking us deep inside her scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love and family.

Monday, May 15, 2017

When someone we love dies, we don't want to believe that means they are gone forever. We look for signs that they are still with us, watching over us. Wherever we think they are though, they certainly aren't where we want them to be, beside us, holding our hand, loving us, and living with us. In Russell Ricard's debut novel, The Truth About Goodbye, will this uncertainty and yearning for a lost loved one keep the main character from going on and living or will it help him to understand the truth about goodbye?

Sebastian is turning forty and it's not just his age that is weighing on him (although the number bothers him as well). His birthday is the anniversary of his husband Frank's death a year ago. Sebastian is still grieving Frank. Wrapped in a heavy cloak of guilt because they argued over a younger, good looking, former fling of Frank's the night Frank died, Sebastian has been having trouble putting one foot in front of another. He can't bring himself to clean up his apartment, he can't contemplate dating, and he can't seem to create the choreography that would help him move beyond the chorus boy roles he's been playing for over two decades. On the plus side, Sebastian has his over the top friend, Chloe, a former Rockette, who is trying hard to haul Seb out of the dark pit he's living in by introducing him to the delectable Reid, a man who intrigues Seb but also makes him feel as if he's cheating on Frank. Sebastian also has his guru, wellness coach, and yogi Andrew who is helping him to keep breathing even if he can't quite get Sebastian to address his deeper issues. And finally in Seb's corner, is his furry cat Arthur. In fact, it is originally through Arthur that Seb first suspects that Frank is still with him.

Seb is skittish, running hot and cold about Reid. He's a drama queen, and he's suddenly seeing Frank's ghost on the ceiling. The biggest constant in his life is his community center gig teaching tap. These things come together to round out his character as a nice man who's a little flaky, overwhelmed by grief, angry at fate, and uncertain how to push on. His loss will always be a part of him but as the novel opens, it is consuming him. Ricard has done a nice job showing how grief creeps into all corners of a life. But he's also done a nice job showing how loyal friends can be the bridge between a formerly happy life and a new and different, happy life. There are some interesting snapshots into NYC musical theater life and a look at what's available as the next stage for someone aging out of being a chorus boy. Reid was a lovely, understanding man but the reason for his determined pursuit of Seb, who was nothing if not capricious towards Reid and a possible relationship, wasn't entirely clear. Chloe is a wonderful friend and brings some fantastic levity to the story. The end was predictable, perhaps feeling more so that way because there's a four year gap between the bulk of the story and the final chapter. In the end though, this was a sweet love story about living and healing after loss.

The Truth About Goodbye by Russell Ricard
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Nine Island by Jane Alison
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
The Young Widower's Handbook by Tom McAllister
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do But You Could've Done Better by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
Make Trouble by John Waters
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Water From My Heart by Charles Martin
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner

Amazon says this about the book: Brilliantly wrought, incisive, and stirring, The Heirs tells the story of an upper-crust Manhattan family coming undone after the death of their patriarch

Six months after Rupert Falkes dies, leaving a grieving widow and five adult sons, an unknown woman sues his estate, claiming she had two sons by him. The Falkes brothers are pitched into turmoil, at once missing their father and feeling betrayed by him. In disconcerting contrast, their mother, Eleanor, is cool and calm, showing preternatural composure.

Eleanor and Rupert had made an admirable life together -- Eleanor with her sly wit and generosity, Rupert with his ambition and English charm -- and they were proud of their handsome, talented sons: Harry, a brash law professor; Will, a savvy Hollywood agent; Sam, an astute doctor and scientific researcher; Jack, a jazz trumpet prodigy; Tom, a public-spirited federal prosecutor. The brothers see their identity and success as inextricably tied to family loyalty – a loyalty they always believed their father shared. Struggling to reclaim their identity, the brothers find Eleanor’s sympathy toward the woman and her sons confounding. Widowhood has let her cast off the rigid propriety of her stifling upbringing, and the brothers begin to question whether they knew either of their parents at all.

A riveting portrait of a family, told with compassion, insight, and wit, The Heirs wrestles with the tangled nature of inheritance and legacy for one unforgettable, patrician New York family. Moving seamlessly through a constellation of rich, arresting voices, The Heirs is a tale out Edith Wharton for the 21st century.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Generally it's my husband who reads the spy novels in this house. Stereotypical, I know, but for the most part, I don't have much interest in thrillers or espionage. There are rare exceptions and Helen Dunmore's novel, Exposure, is one of those exceptions, perhaps because it is as much about all of the innocent and not so innocent victims of such a crime and the ways in which their own secrets and lies come to light in the face of the accusation of spying as it is about the espionage itself.

London, 1960. The height of the Cold War. Simon Callington lives with his wife Lily and their three children. He's a minor official at the Admiralty who agrees to bail out old friend and fellow co-worker Giles after Giles ends up in hospital under suspicious circumstances. That the file Simon recovers from Giles' flat is meant to be passed on to someone else is clear but it being in Simon's possession at all implicates him in something bigger than he ever expected and he finds himself morally trapped. Simon must be the fall guy for his accidental discovery and he must keep quiet, even in the face of innocence, to protect himself and so many others from their own shame of exposure whether it be over the espionage itself or a hidden heritage or a homosexual affair. How his silent complicity affects everyone else in the novel drives the majority of the story, rather than the secrets hidden in the file. Everyone is hiding something, holding close their own secrets, and shying away from exposure, making everyone suspect in their own way.

Dunmore is masterful in her drawing of this subtle, threatening tale. The complexity of weaving each character's point of view together, explaining all of the various omissions and secretive actions that could have changed their trajectories is done so very well that the reader never once wonders why the obvious truth remained so shrouded in mystery. She taps into the secrecy and paranoia of the time period, as well as its banality, beautifully. Both Simon and Lily are fearful of sharing their secrets, of shattering the life they have built, making them the perfect people to be manipulated by the faceless espionage ring. There is a slow rising tension, a looming unease, as the narrative progresses even though not much happens until the unexpected climax, right near the end when the narrative is quickly blown open only to close over again just as quickly. A stunning way to end a novel about fear and shame and secrets. Definitely not a traditional espionage thriller, this is tangled and complicated and menacing and an adroit, skillful look at human beings in all their inscrutability.

Monday, May 8, 2017

A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Nine Island by Jane Alison
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
The Young Widower's Handbook by Tom McAllister
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do But You Could've Done Better by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
Make Trouble by John Waters
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Water From My Heart by Charles Martin
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar

I've heard nothing but wonderful things about this tale of a widowed amateur naturalist and a local vicar both interested in why locals claim that the mythical Essex Serpent has returned after 300 years. This juxtaposition of science and religion should be fascinating indeed.

How could I possibly pass up a book about the Whitaker girls, as I am one myself? OK, so we're not exactly four generations of women reuniting in a crumbling family mansion by the sea, but I still can't wait.

Friday, May 5, 2017

Nowadays you can swipe right or scroll through dozens of people suggested by an algorithm on any number of internet dating sites in the search for your soulmate but before the internet, those searching for love had far fewer resources. They could hope to just meet someone serendipitously, they could ask for their family and friends to introduce them to likely partners, or, just before World War II, they could sign up with the Marriage Bureau, a brand new matchmaking service opened in 1939 and located in London. Penrose Halson, who not only ran her own matchmaking service in the Katherine Allen Marriage and Advice Bureau and eventually bought the original Marriage Bureau but also used the service herself, has written a charming, entertaining history of the unconventional agency and the tales of some of the clients and the matches they made under the bureau's auspices.

Audrey Parsons went out to India to marry a man near her uncle's remote tea plantation. Once there she knew they wouldn't suit and she ended by returning to England. This wasn't the first time that a trip to India and an engagement didn't end at the altar for her, much to her parents' chagrin. What she did come home with though was the seed of the idea, proposed by her uncle, that would eventually become the Marriage Bureau. Enlisting her friend, Heather Jenner, a socially astute divorcee, the two women determined to start a business that would match up eligible single men and women with suitable people they might not otherwise meet. Jenner and Parsons, the latter using the name Mary Oliver to hide her potentially scandalous actions from her parents, built the first matchmaking business of its kind even as the shadow of WWII loomed ever closer. The two women insisted on interviewing each of their clients, and they maintained a meticulous record of each person in order to find good and viable matches for as many people as possible. They took into consideration not only class and age but also some interesting and unique wants and likes. Their businesslike approach and astute use of feel-good publicity grew their business into a thriving concern and many people did in fact find their partner and happiness through the auspices of the Marriage Bureau.

This delightful true story captures the imagination of the reader much as the business did of a nation starved for positive news in the face of an imminent war. The tales of the real people who turned to Jenner and Oliver run the gamut. Some people were delights while others were positively difficult and demanding. The way that they carefully vetted all clients was fascinating and reflected the mores and attitudes of the time. Starting in 1939 and initially thought of as a good way for expats only back in Blighty for a brief time to find a wife, the bureau expanded to take on all sorts from local to international and it stayed as busy, if not more so, during the war, as it had beforehand. Because of the inclusion of the stories of the matches, the narrative has a very episodic feel to it. Its general tone is sweet and cheerful although there are certainly some very poignant and sad tales included as well. The very end includes lists of actual comments the interviewers made about the clients and some were a bit horrifyingly unkind but they were entertaining all the same (although I shudder to think what notes on me might have looked like). The book only covers the first ten years of the bureau's existence and I would have liked more on how the bureau evolved over the years, even if only in an epilogue. This is a quick read, a fascinating snapshot of a time and a society, a very different angle on the war years indeed.

Amazon says this about the book: No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

There are some novels that you should, by all rights, enjoy. They have all sorts of elements that usually guarantee your gushing enthusiasm. But somehow, in practice, they end up not working for you at all. Unfortunately Josi Kilpack's The Vicar's Daughter was one of these for me. A historical romance with more than a hint of a Cyrano de Bergerac story line, this should have been right up my alley.

Twenty year old Cassie Wilton is the youngest of six sisters. Her father, the vicar of the title, and mother can only afford for one daughter to be out in society at a time but Lenora, the sister just older than Cassie, is so shy and uncomfortable in social situations that she's not likely to get married any time soon. And Cassie, who has her eye on a young local man and feeling as if her own chances of marriage dwindle as time goes by, doesn't want to wait her turn. When Lenora comes home from a ball with a handkerchief she was lent during an allergy attack and tells Cassie about the kindness of Evan, the owner of the handkerchief and a former clerk new to town who has been named as his wealthy great-uncle's heir, Cassie hatches a plan to bring Lenora and Evan together. She writes letters to Evan in Lenora's name, eventually falling for him herself, even as he's falling for the Lenora he believes is the author of the letters. All of a sudden it looks like Cassie's meddling is going to lead to unhappiness and heartbreak for all three people involved.

This should have guaranteed I like the book but I didn't like Cassie much nor did I like her selfishly milquetoast sister. That her parents catered to her sister without regard to Cassie's feelings in any way was incredibly frustrating, even if Cassie was annoying. That Evan was unfamiliar with the social rules of those who were once firmly his superiors is believable but that those he consulted gave him such poor advice (perhaps understandable from his rival for Cassie's affection but inexcusable from his uncle) was crazy-making. Quite frankly, he didn't have much of a presence in the book at all despite being the ostensible hero. More fleshed out than Evan's character, the female characters were not consistent in their actions. Cassie docile and abashed all of a sudden and Lenora inexplicably finding a backbone only when it suited to move the plot away from an untenable situation just didn't ring true. There were dolloping heaps of sanctimony and moralizing to go around and the actual romance felt thin and unsubstantiated. Those who want a story about self-sacrifice and forgiveness might find what they're looking for in this clean romance, I guess I prefer more romance in my romances (and no, I don't mean that as a euphemism for something else).

Monday, May 1, 2017

Miss You by Kate Eberlen
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Nine Island by Jane Alison
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
The Young Widower's Handbook by Tom McAllister
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do But You Could've Done Better by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
Make Trouble by John Waters
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
The Vicar's Daughter by Josi S. Kilpack
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Water From My Heart by Charles Martin
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar

How can you pass up a book titled this? I don't know if the word I'm thinking of (and so are you, if you just admit it) has any connection to the story of a woman who appears to be perfect until her past, in the person of her old high school crush, comes calling but I am looking forward to finding out.

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About Me

A voracious reader, fledgling runner, and full time kiddie chauffeur.
If anyone out there wants to send me books for review (oh please don't fro me in that briar patch!), you can contact me at whitreidsmama (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you do write me there, put the blog name in the subject line or I'm liable to send the unread message to spam. My book review policy can be found here.